Our Pubescent Culture -

Adults Refusing To Grow Up

By EVANGELIST MIKE AZINGER

7 FOXBORO DRIVE

VIENNA, WEST VIRGINA 26105

E-Mail: mikeazinger@aol.com

www.GuardingtheLandmarks.com

Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that, upon other fields, on other days, will bear the fruits of victory. -Douglass MacArthur

MacArthur’s quote, now painted on the wall of a gym at West Point, is a cleverly worded proverb that teaches a universal truth: play is preparation for real life. His brilliant quote also puts the role of sports in their proper perspective: they too are play, and, thus, preparation for real life.

In MacArthur’s context, they are preparation for the real life of the battlefield. MacArthur understood, as modern-day Americans do not, that sports are preparation for real life - they are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

As I said in another column, America’s inordinate fixation on professional sports (and amateur sports also) is a symptom of a culture that worships play and that, as a result, will not grow up.

There is nothing wrong with an adult enjoying sports, but there is something severely wrong with a culture that worships them. Super Bowl Sunday was America’s religion on display, and the zealous, wild-eyed fans could be seen worshipping in the stands.

A recently released book with the awkward title Rejuvenile (by Christopher Noxon) reveals some alarming yet, heretofore, obvious symptoms about our culture - a culture that is seemingly unwilling to let go of childhood. The book reviewer of Rejuvenile, Susie Currie, in The Weekly Standard, notes in a how-about-this-one! moment that the week she began reading Noxon’s book, a skateboarder from her area was hit by a car and killed. "He was," she notes ironically, "42."

The examples in Noxon’s book of adults who refuse to grow up abound, including this one from the it-would-be-funny-if-it-weren’t-so-true category: half of all grown-ups that visit Disneyworld come without kids. Or how about this one: the most watched cable station among men ages 18 to 34 isn’t Fox, A&E or ESPN; it’s CN - the Cartoon Network. Seriously.

And there are more. Like those who collect Legos, Barbies, and trading cards, or the adults "who love skateboards, skipping, and stickball." Or how about the Ohio couple in their forties "who have annual season passes not only to the two stateside Disney wonderlands, but also Tokyo Disney and Euro Disney near Paris, and they spend at least a weekend a month at one of the parks."

Several years ago, I read an article in National Review that made the acute observation of the number of grown men today who dress like their little boys: t-shirt, shorts, tennis shoes, and ball cap.

Once, boys wished to be like men. They still do, of course, but boys are finding that the men that they wish to be like are, in this upside down world, now wanting to be like them. In looking up to their dads, instead of seeing an example of how to act like a man, they see a mirror - dads acting like them.

May I bring politics into this? Is it a surprise then, that we don’t have the stomach for victory in Iraq? Most of the real men in our country are fighting the enemies of America over there, while over here the Peter Pans of America are sitting Indian style in their living rooms, dressed like their ten-year-old sons, watching Elmer Fudd on his eternal hunt to bag Bugs Bunny.

The real men in uniform overseas are doing men’s work, and too many American males, who should be supporting the soldiers in Iraq, are too distracted by their Play Stations to root them on.

Curry quotes Noxon: ‘I came to think of the border between adulthood and childhood as a Cold War checkpoint once spotlit and armed, now unguarded and porous,’ - Curry adding, "an apt analogy, as kids now run toward the door marked Adults Only as fast as their elders are doubling back."

Like the married Nevada man that Curry explains, "quit his job at IBM to spend more time with his video games and action figures. Now, he’s in front of a computer up to 16 hours a day playing various complex games and publishing strategy guides for them. ‘If I had kids, I’d have to compete with them for all my toys,’ the man explains.

Is it any wonder that so many women are entering politics? Our men are at home with their X Boxes. Women are filling the vacuum (instead of running one) that nature so famously abhors. Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi didn’t actually decide to run for high office, they got sucked in by the giant vacuum left by men, who - like Saul when chosen by God to be king of Israel - are hiding among the stuff.

Killing Naboth wasn’t Ahab’s idea; he was too busy pouting in his bedroom. The vile scheme of killing Naboth and his family to get Naboth’s vineyard was conjured up by the wicked Jezebel and Ahab had neither the desire nor the will to stop her. We may well get Hillary simply because there are no men to stop her. Jezebel’s rise when men are weak.

Perhaps feminism is responsible for the "rejuvenile" segment of our population: men ridiculed for being men get tired of the ridicule and could just decide to revert back to childhood. It’s more fun and less stress. Sounds plausible to me.

Indeed, I blame feminism. It is destroying and has destroyed most everything else truly American in our country; they must be responsible for this scourge also.

When manhood is glorified again and cowardice returns to being a trait that men would rather die than become associated with, we will rid our nation of nonsense like this. It is hardly encouraging though, when shame itself is nearly gone leaving us nothing left to ridicule bad character traits like cowardice and perpetual pubescence.

There is something very encouraging in American culture, however, and it has remained constant since 9/11; that is the average citizen’s admiration of the American soldier and his manliness, and his devotion to duty, and his sacrifice for God, and for family, and for country.

The American soldier is the apotheosis of being an adult and of manhood: by nature of their profession, they will sacrifice their live for others and for causes greater than themselves. And they even do it for pubescent adults who not only would not do the same, but who would not even begin to understand the concept. Yes, the American soldier dies for those people too.

You can’t get any more grown up than that. V